EBC playthrough thread

For discussion of Lunar: Eternal Blue, the remake of Lunar 2 for Saturn/Playstation and all its translations
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Alunissage
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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Alunissage »

Had to take a picture of one of my cats, and caught him in a moment made more amusing by the bit of EBC dialogue in the background:
Velcro with EBC cropped.jpg
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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Alunissage »

Then I got to the NEXT line.
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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by jay_are »

SWEET about the cat! :lol:
I'm playing through the JP Saturn Lunar 2.
I notice something that I wish was in the JP PlayStation.

JP Saturn:
http://i957.photobucket.com/albums/ae53 ... F87EB8.jpg

JP PlayStation:
http://i957.photobucket.com/albums/ae53 ... EED3FE.jpg

In the Saturn, the enemy names have an outline. JP PlayStation version doesn't have this, and it makes the enemy names hard to read if the background is white.
I think I remember trying to read Lemina's Magic Tester name in Japanese and couldn't.

I have a feeling the US PlayStation version, it doesn't have the outline, but it has a window behind it!
http://www.lunar-net.com/ebc/screens/1/EBC1021.JPG

So, PlayStation US wins that one. (And Saturn, but that's beside the point of the thread almost.)

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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Alunissage »

So, I haven't talked too much about my own renewed impressions of the game, since I've mainly been responding to other comments. But I probably should.

I generally haven't had as much fondness for the EB characters, for various reasons. But I've been paying a lot of attention to the dialogue, since I've transcribed nearly all of it up through Zulan (my notes doc is 71K words, which is the size of a novel!), and I've really come to appreciate the characters more. I think part of this is that I'm more familiar with the SegaCD game, and there are various minor changes that tend to make them more appealing to me. (Hiro trying to block Ronfar from peeping rather than join in on it, for example.) And, of course, there's just more there... more dialogue, more portraits. I'm sure part of my general dislike of Ruby was her deranged pic in EB. She still has bratty moments in EBC, but dang that one happy portrait is cute.

I haven't warmed up much to Lemina, though, because her money-grubbing is so overdone that it's hard to see a likable character peeking through. It doesn't help that there are some rough edges like this, in the Carnival:

Pink-haired woman: A flying cat?! That’s a mighty rare creature indeed! Say, why don't you let me display it in our Museum of Freaks? It’ll make us both rich!
Lemina [laugh]: Stop that silly talk this instant! That’s so inhumane even I wouldn't do it!
Ruby [annoyed]: Speak for yourself! She’s talking about some serious money!

followed immediately by this:

(same woman): I'm telling you guys! Just a few months with this cat on display, and we can all retire!
Lemina [money]: Think about it, Ruby! You'd have enough money to buy a mountain of fresh fish!
Ruby [mad/flame]: I don’t want to hear you suggest that again, Lemina, or I’m going to get VERY angry!

Her redeeming moment is completely undone right afterward. And while we know that she has noble motives, her avarice is so disagreeable that it's hard to give her the benefit of the doubt. I've never understood why people like her, and I still don't.

There are other occasional misses with characterization, I think. I love how serious and adult Jean is when she decides to join the group to fight Plantella, and sometimes she seems to revert too much to airhead later. Ronfar's womanizing is also overdone, though not as excessively as Lemina's greed, and at least one of the female NPCs shoots down his obnoxious joke at her. (The writer wrote himself into that bit of dialogue a bit too obviously, let's say.) But mostly I like him. And I definitely find Hiro more likeable now, even if he does have a few early airhead moments babbling about Lucia's beauty that actually seem rather incongruous with his character as a whole... because actually he doesn't seem as one-dimensionally motivated by hormones as I remember him being. So it's kind of a letdown when he falls back into that stereotype, though actually it's mainly at the very beginning rather than later.

Ruby is a bit inconsistent too. She insists that she's Hiro's girlfriend and that he has no business being interested in Lucia (and I think WD dialed this down a bit), but there are also lines like:

Ruby: Do you hear that, Hiro? Lucia's worried about Giban. I wonder if she worries about you, too!

where she seems to be encouraging him about Lucia.

Some non-text stuff. As I mentioned, I've been tracking Lucia's stats, which isn't easy. She appears to rejoin the party at specific levels, e.g., level 24 when she rejoins just before fighting the Missing Link. She gains a level after that battle because it gives 2600 EXP and level 25 is 2470 EXP after level 24. But I don't know what would happen if she were already at 25 before leaving the party in Zulan. If one of you level-grinding types ever feels like doing some experiments for me, let me know.

I can confirm she gets Lightning Bomb at level 22, but I haven't yet seen her use it. Oh, here's an interesting thing. Her outfits really do have stats associated with them, like any other equipment. When she changes, her DEF goes up by 3 and her MgcDef goes down by 5. Of course, I have no idea which does what or even why this change happens, since it's not like her equipment is variable. If it's meant to reflect that she's exchanging magical robes for clothes that will help her blend in or something, it's pretty subtle.

One other thing. It seems that equipping the Shiro Crest together with the Dream or Snake Crests nullifies the stat penalty of both crests. That is, the Dream and Snake Crests each have a -5 Atk penalty, and the Shiro Crest has a -5 Wisdom penalty... but equipping the Shiro Crest AND one of the others leave both Atk and Wisdom unaffected. I'm so early in the game that I only have four crests to play with, but it will be interesting to see if this is the case with other combos. I don't recall seeing this mentioned in the guide, though I might've just missed it.

I almost forgot to mention the thing that was on my mind when I started this post, and that was simply: dang, there's a LOT of talk in this game. It's more noticeable when it's my own poor hands trying to keep up with it all, but the ratio of battles to babble is ridiculously low. Between the simplified dungeons and the lack of overworld battles, it seems like hours between fights. And while EB had the problem of chests frequently having the equipment you just bought inside them, EBC has the opposite problem of all the equipment being at the stores (except Lemina's staffs, which are all in dungeons as well as at the Vane shop) and not much interesting stuff to find. Granted, I'm still early on in the game, and I know it'll pick up with crests and accessories, but it's just not quite as exciting to find a chest when it's probably an herb. Also, I ended up being a bit strapped for cash in Zulan, needing to sell stuff for the first time in order to get all the equipment... and then realized that there was Plate Armor in the Mayor's house that everyone except Lucia could wear and that was better than the armor I'd just gotten for them all... including the Iron Armor I'd bought in W Nota and never used because there is no fighting between there and Zulan. And then I ended up with not one but two extra Fur Dresses from enemy drops. At least the earlier equipment dropped by enemies was the stuff you'd buy in the next town, not the last one. Wait, that's what I was complaining about in EB. I think maybe I should stop typing now.

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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Kizyr »

Alun, have you considered using a speech-to-text program to dictate? I actually did that to transcribe a lot of dialogue for SSS and EBC back when I originally made my notes for the Japanese-to-English differences lists. The program I used (e-speaking) was actually really great for that after I trained it for my voice, and only required some minor, occasional corrections.

...on that note, e-speaking was one of the few times I actually liked a demo version so much that I paid for the full version. Unfortunately, a few months later I had to upgrade to Windows Vista, which they didn't support. (Though apparently they now support Win7 and Win8, so I might try to dig out my version again.) KF
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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Alunissage »

I remember you mentioning that. I don't think it would work for me in this context since I tend to be obsessive about getting all the punctuation right and such. Thanks for the rec, though.

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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by jay_are »

Hormone-driven characters though. Yes it is a let down at times, the level of sublime goes down a bit :lol: but it is natural all the same! It's a BIG part of the charm in the Lunar games.

I get the feeling that while Lunar is very deep in dialogue, it's still meant to be taken more casually and lightly than to go out and pick apart the details. However, I can definitely see where polish is needed, and it makes me kinda happy, it opens up the mind to what they could have done in a 3rd game, and shows how the series could be even better than it is!
I just hope people like Alunissage and Temzin are part of the development in the next remake.

That thing about very minimum amount of battles and finding equipment you had already bought... this game's really easy.
Even when I got careless and had all my characters die, I still survived cause Lucia escaped. However, the real fun is the dragon battles, Borgan, and Zophar.

Anyway, here's some differences I found:

http://postimg.org/image/k69f5eo8z/
http://postimg.org/image/a7ogixetf/

Why did the boat have color before? Why was it changed? Unlike Lucia's face improvement from before, I don't see much of a valid reason for either version here.
If it's a colored boat, it's more specific though. So maybe since no one talked about it at all, they changed it? I dunno.

The water has been greatly improved from Saturn to PlayStation.
But what happened to the equip icon? Who would just come and say "This equip icon looks correct, let me ruin it without them noticing. Ñyak ñyak ñyak."
Sadly, I noticed this since the game started, but didn't have time to compare yet.

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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Alunissage »

This is really cool. I love version differences, so it's really neat that you're playing those two side by side.

Is it possible to make the speed a bit slower on your gifs?

Re the equip icon, maybe they wanted the round shape to look a bit more like a shield...I dunno.

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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Alunissage »

By the way, are the two glitches that allow one to view Lucia's spells and stats in the Japanese PS and Saturn games? These are:
1) using Calm Litany outside of battle will leave all party member portraits selected, allowing Lucia to be selected from the Magic menu
2) at a shop, selecting a piece of equipment to buy allows one to then select any party member and view stats

I wish I knew of similar glitches in the SegaCD game, but I don't. :P

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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Uncle Ramus »

I need somebody to agree with me that the Japanese and US versions of Rondo of Light and Shadow don't sound exactly the same. Of course I don't mean the vocals, I mean the instrumentals. To me the difference is most noticeable in the drums and that bass instrument.

JP PS1
https://youtu.be/r-_Y0q1LVHM?t=1h18m1s

US
https://youtu.be/iraYY7gpa-g?t=1m9s

Am I wrong? Or was this difference already widely known among the fans?

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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Temzin »

You are all nuts. I love this place. jay_are, great observation on the subtle graphical differences. On the Equip icon, I think the simple answer is that the PS version of EB is a low-fidelity port and they've just let some slopping stretching happen. They may have added a dungeon or two and added movement to the ending animation, but that can't disguise that it's a rough job, evident most of all in the music but also the battle transition music slowdown and these other oddities you've uncovered. Think of it as the GBA version of Final Fantasy VI: new dungeons, still inferior.

Uncle Ramus, the instrumentation on the different Rondos is indeed different. I seem to recall hearing that Working Designs would recreate some of the sound effects or instruments on cinemas where they couldn't get a clean separation of music and dialogue. May be on one of the American "making of" documentaries. It's evident even in the very first TSS in the opening movie. I have to admit, the American one's instrumentation is better.

Regarding the burn-up plant boss, it's true that there's a difference. I think that insane hardback guidebook WD made refers to the source code having been damaged there, so in the international version the boss just sort of flickers away. Strange no matter how you slice it, since it draws attention to yet another sloppy feature of the remake: the delightful exploding bosses of the MCD just die normally like in SSS. Blah. The already disastrous redesign of all stages of the previously perfect Zophar fight (see avatar) is punctuated by the crime of reducing the greatest exploding last boss in history until FFVIII to a...cracked face with a frowny expression and a fade-out. Double blah.

Alun, great observations on the people in general. One thing to note is that WD's a bit...wordy in this one. Shigema once said he wanted Hiero to talk more than Arhes, which he does, but WD Hiero talks more than all of them, and some of this may translate into some of the excessive lines you notice. I...just can't bring myself to replay anything that isn't MCD EB, so I can't confirm without spending a number of hours on Nico, though.
Last edited by Temzin on Fri Oct 09, 2015 4:57 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by jay_are »

Here are slower gifs (i made the images stay longer)
http://postimg.org/image/dq51t2537/
http://postimg.org/image/tn3tprxhf/

As for the equip icon, its just inexplicably wrong, it has a duplicated line where it doesn't belong, and makes the sword look crooked.
http://s5.postimg.org/bj0t54zsz/Lunar_2_Equip_JP_PS.png

There's a few other minor graphic differences too.
Will post later. As for the glitches, are those steps for Sega CD or PS?

Temzin, I think I have the guide you're talking about. The one with reversible covers? That has stickers on the last few pages?
I didn't read 100% thoroughly, but I couldn't find any mention of the damaged data for Plantella where they detail her battle. (So it's probably somewhere else in the guide.) I did read where they compare the whole scene with the Sega CD version.

... I wouldn't compare SS/PS Lunar 2 with FF6 Advance :lol:
I would only compare it if the SS/PS was the EXACT same as Sega CD just with bad quality music. But hey, it's a big remake. I WISH they did to Final Fantasy VI what they did to Lunar 2. But I get what you mean.

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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Temzin »

Oh nonono, I mean that PS EB is a sloppy port of SS EB! I have much harsher words if MCD is involved. In that scenario, the SS version is FFVI advance, and the PS version is...FFVI iOS.

Yes, that sounds like the guidebook I was thinking of! If not there, it's in the WD instruction book's translation notes. Either way, it was in one of the insane international hardback publications.
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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Alunissage »

Re the song, I can't listen right now, but I definitely remember noticing that they were different (the prominence of the drums in particular) when I first got the Japanese soundtrack lo these many years ago. It probably hasn't been discussed any time recently, though. ^_^

I've been referring to the WD guide frequently (and finding minor errors in it) throughout, and Plantella's code isn't mentioned there... but I that does sound familiar, so it may be in the notes in the manual. Or from some comment on the board, or in the Making Of, or something. Not planning on revisiting that in the near future.

You can't get yourself to play the Saturn L2? It does have the nicer music... =) I think maybe I'll give it another go next year. I played it previously to, I dunno, probably Plantella, but I'm not even sure where my save is. I need to play the Saturn MPEG SSSC anyway, having gone to the trouble of getting the hardware for it, so maybe I can get to both of them.

Does it seem like the NPC sprite variety is kind of low in this game? Maybe it's just because the NPCs are so varied in personality, but it was a little weird to go into the Meribia tavern and see two of the same man and three of the same woman in there. I mean, there are only eight people in there total, and only four distinct sprites. On the other hand, I love the variation in battle sprites.

Hiro talks a lot for a protagonist, but I don't know that he talks more than any of the others. Pretty sure Ruby has still got to have the most lines, as the designated speaking sidekick a la Nall.

One thing that's driving me nuts in Meribia is the desire to correct every NPC that says that Mel founded the city, which is all based on a mistranslation from TSS. Makes me want to yell... not even at WD, really, but at the NPCs for being wrong.

Apropos of not much, I found that Wolfgang's site (now at http://www.wolfgangarchive.com) has the wrong stats for Jean's armor. Which makes me wonder where they came from.

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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by jay_are »

Here's a collection of other minor differences: http://s5.postimg.org/otonynqdh/Lunar_2 ... _diff1.png

Here's another minor Saturn - PS difference, pay attention to Ronfar and Hiro animations and position:
PlayStation: http://s5.postimg.org/ixuqb9b2d/Lunar_2 ... _JP_PS.gif
Sega Saturn: http://s5.postimg.org/e5gbm2r0n/Lunar_2 ... _JP_SS.gif

Looks like PlayStation was polished in that bit. This seems to happen in other places too, like when Lucia and Hiro talk to Gwyn right after you get Lucia, Hiro's sprite does the same thing as in that gif.
But wait... why if Hiro was closer to Lucia and Ronfar was sitting, why was it Ronfar that STOOD UP and moved Hiro out of the way? Makes more sense in Saturn, even if it looks less polished.

Then there's the dithered windows in Saturn to simulate transparency, while PlayStation has the fully fledged transparency feature.
I don't understand why Saturn has to do dithering for the colored menu windows, because the dialogue window is black transparent, just like PlayStation. How come THAT one can have transparency? Is the Saturn able to only have black as transparent and nothing else?
http://s5.postimg.org/9osk1526f/Lunar_2 ... _JP_SS.png

It's not as bad as emulators would have you think. This is because the composite cable (yellow RCA) makes everything a bit blurry horizontally, and it works perfectly for dithering.
(Except on games that are originally 256x240,
Lunar 1 and 2 are 320x240, since the screen has more pixels, it gets more blended.)
The only reason I can still tell this is dithered is because objects behind the dithered window look distorted:
http://s5.postimg.org/kltvpwoxv/Lunar_2 ... _JP_SS.png

Here's the black, non dithered transparency. (still Sega Saturn)
http://s5.postimg.org/5r5abqfd3/Lunar_2 ... _JP_SS.png

--Edit add--

Yeah, I was able to see Lucia's spells.
http://s5.postimg.org/aqkd0prgn/Lunar_2 ... _JP_SS.png

And yes, Plantella burns in Sega Saturn too. So the only version of the 3 remake ports that she doesn't burn in is Working Designs' translation.
Even more curious about this "loss of data" issue, I looked at the hardcover instructions since the info wasn't in the strategy book, and well I couldn't take my time to read the WHOLE booklet, but I saw no mention of this boss. Maybe I'll look again later.

--Edit add 2--

Well would you believe it! Lucia's face in the outfit scene is the same in Saturn and PlayStation JP versions!
The only one with the shaded, less correct proportions is the US version. What................

PlayStation JP (again to compare) http://vid957.photobucket.com/albums/ae ... _JP_PS.mp4
Sega Saturn http://vid957.photobucket.com/albums/ae ... _JP_SS.mp4

So we have 3 versions of the game's movies:
1. Sega Saturn: Clean with decent pixels and lines, fullscreen, Lucia's face is good. Choppy framerate though.
2. PlayStation JP: Better framerate, Lucia's face is good. Lower quality pixels though, and not fullscreen.
3. PlayStation US: Best pixels and lines, best framerate, fullscreen. Lucia's face is strange though, and is not as clean as Saturn, but they're better than JP version.

So why does that Saturn guidebook have the version of Lucia's face where it's shaded?
Working Designs must have used the original uncompressed videos in high resolution and recompressed them to look better than the PlayStation JP version.
I'm thinking whoever gave Working Designs the videos must have forgotten to give them the updated Lucia.

--Edit add 3--

Remember the equip icon stuff?
I had the time to load my US PS1 game and discovered yet something else with it. What a curious little issue.
http://s5.postimg.org/cxolomwqv/Lunar_2_Equip_US_PS.png

The sword looks straight now. Working Designs must have noticed this problem then. But wait, what is that on the top?
It's the only icon with a lower top part now... whoever edited this icon, they must have just copied the top half of the icon, pasted it a pixel lower to match with the sword, but forgot to even the frame's outline. Who would have thought this little icon could have posed a threat across 2 releases from 2 different countries?

I prefer the US straight sword though, so Im glad. But then... I notice something I find unforgivable:
http://postimg.org/image/3sg8urtc3/

Leo's head doesn't move as he walks, like everyone else's.
I don't understand... I remember being bothered by this over 10 years ago. When they play tested this, did they go and get Leo in the epilogue and said
"This sprite looks fine"??? I know the Epilogue is far into the game, but the epilogue lasts long enough for you to notice this.
There are a few townspeople with wrong animations almost like that, but Leo looks so bad.

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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Uncle Ramus »

jay_are wrote:Well would you believe it! Lucia's face in the outfit scene is the same in Saturn and PlayStation JP versions!
The only one with the shaded, less correct proportions is the US version. What................

PlayStation JP (again to compare) http://vid957.photobucket.com/albums/ae ... _JP_PS.mp4
Sega Saturn http://vid957.photobucket.com/albums/ae ... _JP_SS.mp4
:shock:

I DEMAND ANSWERS FROM VIC IRELAND!! :lol: I find it amusing that they chose not to dub the little noise Lucia makes at the end there.

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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Alunissage »

I'm still chugging away at this game, but took a break for a bit to read a six-book series in about a day and a quarter. I just finished up Taben's Peak and am about to head to Vane.

Some notes from the parts I recently played:

Kid in playroom says that "it" (Ruby) has feathers instead of fur. Really? On her body? This seems unlikely with the way her skin stretches and such. But maybe she has pinfeathers on her face or something…

Man in upper-left house in Meribia says that Lunn forbade the construction of a temple in Meribia. Why?

Since Nall remembers the sewers having entrances from Ramus’s shop and the dojo, why didn’t he tell his kids that when he sent them to Meribia?

Perhaps Nall wants Lucia as his hostage specifically to work on humanizing her. He knows what Luna's message is, after all. Not to mention that he probably figures she’s the one most likely to cut and run to pursue her own mission rather than that of the kids'. And, of course, it DOES humanize her, with the kids growing disturbingly attached to her, and she (albeit much less so) to them. I think I'll have to agree that this was a better way to show her humanization than having Hiro walk in on her taking a swim, though for some reason that was kept in the game as well and just moved later.

Hiro and the rest of the party are rather overly approving of Lucia’s not all that special voice. To ask Kizyr: 1) are they as gushy in the Japanese and 2) is it the same voice clip? Also, 3) was there all this bit about singing in EB? I don't mind the humanizing thing, but focusing so much on how good her voice is really seems to be missing the point to me. It was Luna's schtick, not Lucia's, and it obscures the underlying notion that singing is a very human and special thing to do by focusing on an individual voice as being beautiful. The noteworthy thing is that she’s singing at all, not how well she does it. Actually, I think it would’ve been better with an ordinary voice… which it actually more or less is, but the dialogue obscures it. I think it's the same clip that the mother in Larpa sings to her baby with. The point is that singing is an expression of emotion, and, you know, even people without beautiful voices are allowed to sing.

The kids being so very attached to Lucia so quickly might’ve been intended to evoke Althena's maternalism (the SSSC temple theme is even called Mother, I think), but again it seems like overkill. Lucia is a caretaker of a planet, not of a population.

EBC seems to have dropped the line in EB about the White Dragon Wings having lost power over the years, which I think is just as well -- the players who played Lunar 1 will already realize that something’s up with Nall since he hasn’t actually acknowledged being a dragon and can thereby work out story-based reasons for why the wings might not work as well, and the players who didn’t play Lunar 1 won’t know the difference.

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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Sonic# »

^ I seem to recall some note about the White Dragon Wings not working as well in EBC, though it may not have happened when Nall gave over the wings. If it was only implied, it's interesting how easy it is to fill in the blanks. I'd be interested to hear if it's ever addressed later on.
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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Kizyr »

Alunissage wrote:I remember you mentioning that. I don't think it would work for me in this context since I tend to be obsessive about getting all the punctuation right and such. Thanks for the rec, though.
That's understandable -- depending on how well it picks up your diction, it's a toss-up whether it saves you time. It was definitely a time-saver for me, even with getting the punctuation right (e.g., if you say "semicolon", "comma", or "period", it'll put the punctuation in correctly). But it still did require me to keep one hand on the keyboard.
Alunissage wrote:By the way, are the two glitches that allow one to view Lucia's spells and stats in the Japanese PS and Saturn games? These are:
1) using Calm Litany outside of battle will leave all party member portraits selected, allowing Lucia to be selected from the Magic menu
2) at a shop, selecting a piece of equipment to buy allows one to then select any party member and view stats
#1 is possible in both the Japanese and Saturn PS games. But I don't think #2 is possible -- it doesn't let me view stats after buying.
Alunissage wrote:To ask Kizyr: 1) are they as gushy in the Japanese and 2) is it the same voice clip? Also, 3) was there all this bit about singing in EB? I don't mind the humanizing thing, but focusing so much on how good her voice is really seems to be missing the point to me. It was Luna's schtick, not Lucia's, and it obscures the underlying notion that singing is a very human and special thing to do by focusing on an individual voice as being beautiful. The noteworthy thing is that she’s singing at all, not how well she does it. Actually, I think it would’ve been better with an ordinary voice… which it actually more or less is, but the dialogue obscures it. I think it's the same clip that the mother in Larpa sings to her baby with. The point is that singing is an expression of emotion, and, you know, even people without beautiful voices are allowed to sing.
(1) They weren't as gushy, but the kids definitely did praise Lucia's singing. To me, though, the praise sounds as if it's because she went from being very cold and indifferent to singing, and, regardless of her quality, it represented her emotionally opening up more to the people around her. Compare these two lines from the English and Japanese versions:
ENGLISH:
Hiro: "(I should've known her voice was as beautiful as she is...)"
Lucia: "When I sing, I feel a... warmth inside me. It's unlike anything I've felt before."
JAPANESE:
Hiro: "Um, yeah... That... that is... really great, Lucia's song..."
Lucia: "It's a really strange power... It's a wawrmth I've felt only on this world..."


(2) It's the same voice clip, as far as I can tell.

(3) The kids at Taben's Peak did talk about Lucia starting to sing (and dance) in the original EB (both English and Japanese). I mean they said she was great, but again it sounded to me more like it was less about quality and more about the fact that she was opening up emotionally, and letting herself do these things that previously she didn't understand the purpose of.
Sonic# wrote:^ I seem to recall some note about the White Dragon Wings not working as well in EBC, though it may not have happened when Nall gave over the wings. If it was only implied, it's interesting how easy it is to fill in the blanks. I'd be interested to hear if it's ever addressed later on.
I originally thought so, too. But no, he never mentions anything (in the English or Japanese versions) about the White Dragon Wings losing power over the years -- at Taben's Peak when he gives them to you, or any time later. Here's the exact line (in the English version -- the Japanese version says roughly the same thing):
Nall: "This gizmo has the power to transport you out of any cave and back to the surface. You can use them as many times as you want, and they never run out of magic! Cool, huh? Just remember that they might not work if you're someplace with strange magic in the air."

Anyway, I'm currently en route to Pentagulia, so we'll see what's in store next. KF
~Kizyr (they|them)
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Alunissage
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Re: EBC playthrough thread

Post by Alunissage »

I've just gotten to Azado now. Will say that her voice sounded better in the water ruins scene. I still think that scene's kind of forced, though. Hiro should be over the shock, having seen her once already, and she shouldn't be so bothered... it's a silly thing to become humanized with, since nudity taboos are kind of a) negative and b) not really talked about much. Though I guess Ruby gave her an earful the first time, and then she and Jean and Lemina hassled Ronfar for peeking at the changing. But still, it seems forced to me.

Re seeing her stats while at a shop, I don't mean after buying the equipment. If you select a piece of equipment for sale and press the button, the people who can use it are highlighted so you can select them and see the effect on their stats. But you can select people who can't equip it too, and see their stats -- including Lucia. Then when you press the button again you get to the buy screen.

The Japanese game sounds more like what I'd prefer in terms of the singing. Which I guess makes sense.

In Vane, I was thinking a lot about what would make Borgan tolerable. This is mainly because Miria, while not exactly warmly welcoming to him, tolerates him when he visits and continues to tolerate him after the game ends. So I find myself constructing a backstory for them, that maybe they argued about elitism vs egalitarianism, since many NPCs talk about Miria being welcoming to both magicians and non-magicians, e.g. opening the library to all, when Borgan was still a member of the Guild. Is he made out to be as poor a magician in the Japanese game? He doesn't actually sound unintelligent, most of the time; it's just that his unattractive traits are hammed up and pounded in with the evident intent of making be someone to despise. Yet both Miria and an older man who knows Lemina well say that he and Lemina are not so different from each other. I think his character could be written into redemption... certainly a lot more so than Lunn.

I've realized that while transcribing the text I keep slipping into the mindset of how would I rewrite or edit certain parts. Some of that is because there are so many lines that make me wince or get mad... I won't bother with examples right now because they're obvious enough. Some of it's from seeing errors from being in a rush. A lot of it is just wanting to make the game be more consistently good. There's some great stuff, and I'd love to shore up the weaker parts. Sigh.

On the game mechanics front, my little discovery last night was how the Warrior+Seal Crest combo works. The guide says that it doubles the characters ATK with a penalty of #Atks -2. The game says "Disables magic and techniques, but raises attack to full power." But the ATK stat was clearly not double that of the person equipping the pair of crests, and the ratio changed depending on high the person's ATK was -- and it was higher for Ronfar than anyone else. I finally concluded that for Hiro, Jean, and Lemina, the crest combo raises their ATK to be 2*(ATK-10), while for Ronfar it becomes 2*(ATK+5). Not a bad tradeoff for regular battles; he only has one attack anyway, so the only penalty is being unable to cast magic, and generally I don't have him healing anyone until after battle. (That said, the Sluice Forest battles were really quite punishing.) So now Ronfar's ATK is like 242, nearly double Hiro's.

I've also tentatively concluded that two crests with different penalties (e.g., ATK -5 and WIS -5) cancel those penalties out when both equipped, while if it's the same penalty, they stack. So, Shiro + Warrior => WIS -10, because they're both WIS -5 individually, while Shiro + Snake, which have WIS -5 and ATK -5 respectively, don't have either penalty when equipped together.

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